It’s amazing: Linux, with all its millions of tiny freebie programs, FOSS applications, and even SourceForge and all its glory doesn’t have a single decent WYSIWYG blogging client. Not one!?
That’s what Google says anyway. There’s “xfy Blog Editor” for Mac OS X and Linux – except it’s a 32MB download of a trial version for a paid program that’s bloated, slow, and unintuitive. There’s Bleezer, a free Java-based blogging client (so it’s supposed to work everywhere), but it’s even worse. It’s ugly, refuses to connect to WordPress, out of date, and very buggy. Plus, it’s Java. And of course, everyone’s favorite: ScribeFire (aka Performancing). Except we’re talking Linux, not JavaScript; and we’re looking for more than a pretty face and a couple of options.
Why is there no decent blogging utility for Linux? Just because people choose to use Linux and don’t mind a bit of CLI and some kernel hacking doesn’t mean they’re willing to write a couple-thousand word article in Emacs.. It’s not a website, it’s just an article for God’s sake! So all this begs the question: when’s someone (or some company, organization, group, whatever) going to make a down-to-earth (free) WYSIWYG blogging utility for Linux users?
Are you a Linux-loving blogger? What do you use when it comes to making your blog post of the day/week/month? Are you forced to use limited online publishing interfaces or do you just go with the flow and churn out that HTML? And most importantly, what would you like to see in your ideal Linux blogging utility? Because, you never know, we might just find some way to help!
I’m the author of Bleezer. You’re the first person I’ve heard of who is having problems with Linux or Wordpress (though there is a bug with multiple wordpress blogs under one account).
While I don’t suggest that Bleezer is a spectacular work of art, it does generally work. What sorts of issues are you having?
Hello Larry,
Sorry to be bashing Bleezer about like that, just trying to get my point across 🙂
When I try to connect to this very WordPress install from Linux + Bleezer, it claims it gets a 403 when connecting to http://neosmart.net/blog/xmlrpc.php…..
Yet Windows Live Writer on Windows Server 2003 connects just fine, and I can access xmlrpc.php from Linux just fine as well.
Besides all that though, Bleezer’s lack of working keyboard shortcuts for formatting, disregard of basic interface navigation controls (e.g. type, press “B” for bold, then continue typing: it doesn’t work. You have to first click B, then click back in the post box, then type), and it’s HTML isn’t properly formatted.
Anyway, good job at least taking the first step; I still don’t get why no one else has bothered to try.
There is no need for wysiwyg blog editor for most of Linux users. They all familiar with simple html syntax, and that’s the easy way. Different mindset. If I need paragraph there is p tag, why wrestling with some bugy wysiwyg editor?! And wysiwyg is gone. There is wysiwym. 😉
There’s also Drivel… haven’t tried it myself, but it might work for you.
http://www.dropline.net/drivel/
Unfortunately, Drivel isn’t WYSIWYG/WYSIWYM 🙁
Hello,
I searched for a “blogtk” occurence on your blog and as I didn’t find one, I take the chance to comment on this quite old post to tell you that this is another Linux blogging client. I am about to test it for the first time…
At the time of this posting, BloGTK was not a WYSIWYG blogging client – I don’t know if that’s since changed?
I’ve been looking for a while too. Use ecto on the mac, but you could try petrus, I’ve found it useful.Here:
http://code.google.com/p/petrus-blogger/
I am dual booting Vista with Linux Mint. In Vista have been using BlogDesk until recently, tried out Live Writer. In Linux, I’d be happy to get something like BlogDesk that’s able to add keywords, description, adsense tags to a post not to mention adding links & photos’s (with minor adjustment like size). L Writer is great as a blog client. For once MS did something well here, except for serious the bloat, as usual.
So far, ScribeFire is kinda of flaky. Drivel don’t look too promising. Reason I’m trying out linux is Vista is starting to slow in my 1.5 year old lappy. That’s 2G Ram Core 2 lappy.
I’ll give bleezer a shot.
This kind of mentality is exactly why it takes so long for Linux to become popular. I’ve looked down on linux eversince… It was just that I had an extra HD that’s why I wanted to experiment. I must say i’m very impressed with what Ubuntu 9.10 has to offer. but Linux is not exactly user friendly. a WYSIWYG editor would be a welcome
I was tinkering with Linux on and off. I’d say that while linux has come a long way, there’s still a bit more polishing that’s needed. I reckon it quite hard for the community to come out with something that works off laptops especially since there’s so many different hardware out there and more coming out each day.
But Linux based blogging client will be great
There is a newish blogging client I’ve been using for a while:
http://blogilo.gnufolks.org/
It will be standard in KDE 4.4 I believe.
I have a short description and screenshots on my blog http:james4tea.wordpress.com
There are debs for ubuntu and they work on debian too and others (inc. windows!)
James